Scorpion, frog, etc.
If we had stood up to them in 2013, drew a line in the sand and said "No, a bunch of poorly edited snuff films aren't going to cause a bunch of American teens to join an Islamic revolution" these relationships wouldn't exist.
By the way, we are currently trying to ban TikTok because of similar concerns about it rotting teens brains. Before we start frothing at the mouth in rage at some problematic app let's do a thought experiment and consider the future blowback from taking such extreme action.
The government has been involved with the data broker industry since well before the dotcom era. That is the underpinning of all current day surveillance capitalism. It's an intelligence resource they will never overlook.
What if anything the government should do to prevent such recruitment is a matter of debate, but you shouldn't pretend such recruitment didn't happen.
At no meaningful scale. If some dumbass wants to throw their life away in a foreign country we obviously should use all legal means to discourage that but part of being a liberal democracy means you do in fact have to give people enough freedom (rope) to hang themselves.
No one knows what is gonna be credible, but damned if you do and damned if you don’t
There’s probably hundreds of new things at this very second and probably none of them are going to result in anything, but no one knows that for sure
I remember thinking earlier, it's kind of odd that teenagers "running off to join ISIS" was a widespread problem. In hindsight the shills probably blew that whole thing out of proportion to justify more agency scope creep
Truly a sad sight from those looking hopeful after the occupy movement and all the anti surveillance sentiment post-leaks.
The modern left has become the neo-conservatives.
Also, the “Woke” psyop used to destroy Occupy Wall St has now destroyed corporate America with ESG and Woke media scandals. As usual, the CIA and friends are bad at managing blowback.
> the bush jr wars
I.e. claiming no laws were violated (hypothetically) is as much a defense of Twitter as claiming TikTok hasn't broken Chinese law.
Sometimes this is asking that system to print a PSA. Sometimes this is asking that system to maintain propaganda accounts.
This definitely exists, and I'm not sure why people think it wouldn't.
We can complain, but the real remedy is to put laws in place if this is something we really care about.
>Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
It's since been expanded through court cases to extend from congress to every government entity including local ones.
The government is constitutionally forbidden from meddling with the press, even through private entities via the 14th amendment. The FBI and CIA meddled with twitter. The particulars aren't relevant. They're expressly forbidden from doing what they did.
https://transparency.twitter.com/en/reports/removal-requests...:
> Overall, Twitter withheld or otherwise removed some or all of the reported content in response to 51% of global legal demands, down 5% from the previous reporting period.
It is pretty clear that these are Hatch Act violations which is about preventing your tax dollars being put to use as a part of partisan political campaigns, which is what happened.
Civilian "unempowered" agencies fall under the Less Restricted Hatch Act category, and certain Agencies like the IC, fall under a more stringent part of this, the Further Restricted category, see [1]
Some of these IC members in the Further Restricted Category were prompting BigTech censorship, or, running defense for the "Laptop from Hell" story, similar to some of the things they did back in the 60s when they were involved with unlawful activities regarding Civil Rights and Civil Liberties campaigns.
I'd argue in favor of:
(1) Strengthening the Hatch Act
(2) Handling Constitutional violations by the IC under the Hatch Act
(3) Prosecutions of the Hatch Act under existing Law
(4) Clearance revocations
(5) Removal of Section 230 protections for BigTech when acting as an agent of govt censorship
(6) Budget cuts / Budget reformations for some select Federal Agencies, FBI being foremost
(7) Forced retirement / exit from federal service of those involved in these behaviors.
(8) Debarring of contractors involved in some of these heinious activities
(9) Strengthening Federal Acquisition Regulation
(10) Diffusion of Federal Agencies HQs throughout the United States to prevent centralization in overly partisan areas
(11) Applying Diversity & Inclusion to political parties and other important characteristics of job seekers
(12) Adding restrictions or longer "Cooling Off Periods" for the revolving doors between IC, Congress, BigTech, Lobbyists, and the Consultant Class.